Google will pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle data claims

Google volition wage $1.4 cardinal to Texas to settee claims the institution collected information connected users without permission

Google volition wage $1.4 cardinal to Texas to settee claims the institution collected users' information without permission, the state’s lawyer wide announced Friday.

Attorney General Ken Paxton described the colony arsenic sending a connection to tech companies that helium volition not let them to marque wealth disconnected of “selling distant our rights and freedoms.”

“In Texas, Big Tech is not supra the law." Paxton said successful a statement. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, backstage searches, and adjacent their voiceprints and facial geometry done their products and services. I fought backmost and won.”

The statement settles respective claims Texas made against the hunt elephantine successful 2022 related to geolocation, incognito searches and biometric data. The authorities argued Google was “unlawfully tracking and collecting users’ backstage data.”

Paxton claimed, for example, that Google collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of look geometry, done specified products and services arsenic Google Photos and Google Assistant.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the statement settles an array of “old claims,” immoderate of which subordinate to merchandise policies the institution has already changed.

“We are pleased to enactment them down us, and we volition proceed to physique robust privateness controls into our services,” helium said successful a statement.

The institution besides clarified that the colony does not necessitate immoderate caller merchandise changes.

Paxton said the $1.4 cardinal is the largest magnitude won by immoderate authorities successful a colony with Google implicit this benignant of data-privacy violations.

Texas antecedently reached 2 different cardinal settlements with Google wrong the past 2 years, including 1 successful December 2023 successful which the institution agreed to wage $700 cardinal and marque respective different concessions to settee allegations that it had been stifling contention against its Android app store.

Meta has besides agreed to a $1.4 cardinal colony with Texas successful a privateness suit implicit allegations that the tech elephantine utilized users' biometric information without their permission.

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